1. For years I used Executive Software's Defrag program and it was great. As time went on and Win 7 pro came along, the need lessened as we more and more started storing different files types on different drives or partitions. The built-in Windows Defrag served our needs well enough. Only time really need something better is when cleaning a data drive ... especially a mirrored backup drive. When files are deleted on a source drive, it doesn't remove the deleted ones. So ever once and a while, I wipe the backup drive and start over. My son keeps some files on that drive related to his Flight Sims , maps and other data that he needs as a pilot as well as 1 or 2 steam games. All drives are SSHDs which comes in handy as files accessed frequently load faster, with the large AutoCAD files being of greatest concern.
I did a defrag using defraggler yesterday ... it finished in about 3 hours. It's a 2 TB SSHD with two partitions. The 1st partition on the outer (faster) part of the drive is for active files. The old archived files are on the 2nd (slower) partition. I defragged the 1st yesterday. Today I went in and got rid of some recycle bin files belonging to another user (my son). So before setting up the backup software to get going again, I figured I'd defrag one more time. I started at 12 noon, it's now 7:45 pm and it says it need 9 hours . There are 241.2 GB of Used Space and 690.2 GB of Free Space. It says it is 32% done. It just changed to 9 hours and 15 minutes.
The Graphic shows 10 rows of blue (Not Fragmented) squares with about 10% white (empty) at the top. Yesterday there were a lot less white squares. Been watching it as I type (and eat dinner ) .. it's will now complete in 9 hours and 45 minutes. The same 2 squares have been active for quite some time, one about 40% across screen one does yellow followed by one about 75% across screen going green. This has been going on for about 40 minutes. All the while the file names in the status window change about every 3 seconds. Meanwhile the fragmentation column says 0% fragmented and the status remains at 32%. Below those 1st 10 rows, there's about 20 or so almost all white rows, along with 9 red (fragmented) squares, 2 purple (MFT) and two blue ones averaging about 3 colored squares per row.
So I guess the question is ... what's taking so long and why stuck at 32% for 8 hours when the whole time it was reading and writing files. I stopped it, ran Windows Defrag and it completed in about a minute. Tried Defraggler again and it says "an hour" .... managed to get to 33% and 45 minutes to go in about 4 minutes. 20 minutes later still says 45 minutes and 38%
2. With 75% of the drive free and planning to use the rest for a mirror backup ... goal is to get all these files in a relatively contiguous space so as to have the archived files at the back of the drive
3. I did see the option of running it with the option of putting files at the end of the drive. Don't see why I would ever choose that option, if anything I'd want the opposite.
4. Don't quite get the discrepancy between 0% fragmented files and 16 (now 70+ red squares at 44%) ... at least its not flashing the same 2 squares yellow and green for an hour and is closing up all the blank spaces this round.